The woman entered Wild Birds Unlimited dressed in the uniform of the Armstrong Atlantic University Police and carrying a McDonald’s Happy Meal Box. Since neither my co-worker Nicole nor I had ordered a Happy Meal, we curiously waited for the tale sure to follow.

“Someone found this in the middle of Abercorn Street, near the college, and called us,” she began her story. “It doesn’t seem to be injured. It tried to peck me.”

Cautiously, we peered inside, expecting to see one of the many species of warblers that have had their migrations interrupted by collisions with cars or windows. The bird that peered up at us was much bigger than a warbler, and sat snugly nestled in its temporary home. “That’s ketchup on the side of the box, not blood,” the woman assured us.

I looked at the soft brown feathers, sturdy pointed beak, and wide lobed toes. It’s a “pied-billed grebe,” I announced with amazement. When Nicole gently picked up the bird to inspect it for possible injuries, it stretched its neck and attempted to peck her nose.

She noted that the bottoms of its feet looked a little scraped, but otherwise, the grebe seemed to be healthy. It felt solid and wasn’t emaciated, although when Nicole weighed the bird, it weighed only about half what an adult grebe was supposed to weigh.

“It must have been migrating,” I speculated, “and gotten confused. I’ve heard about loons landing on wet pavement, thinking that it was water.”

Both loons and grebes are excellent swimmers. They spend their time diving and swimming underwater in pursuit of food. However, their legs are set so far back on their bodies that if they get stranded on land, they aren’t able to take off again.

Nicole put the bird in a laundry basket lined with a soft towel, added a bowl of water, and a dish of live mealworms. She covered the basket so the bird wouldn’t fly out and could rest. Then she called licensed rehabilitator Pat Wolters. Thirty minutes later, we peered into the basket and discovered that the mealworm dish was empty. We refilled the dish, and the grebe eagerly began plucking up the worms. This was good news, since now Pat wouldn’t have to feed it with a tube.

I had just seen and photographed a pied-billed grebe at the Savannah National Wildlife Refuge a few days before our close encounter. In the water, grebes are stubby, little brown birds that are commonly mistaken for ducks. They are “now you see ‘em, now you don’t” birds, since they disappear below the surface just as you get your binoculars pointed in the right direction. They swim and dive like ducks, but they don’t have webbed feet.

While the occasional pied-billed grebe may spend the summer in coastal Georgia, most of them migrate further north to build nests in shallow water at the marshy edges of ponds, bays, or sloughs. They get their name — “pied-billed” — from the fact that during the breeding season, their chicken-like bills are black with a white stripe. Fine dining for a grebe includes aquatic insects, crayfish, leeches, frogs, tadpoles, small fish, and even spiders.

Oddly, grebes swallow many feathers and even feed feathers to their young. Scientists speculate that the feathers assist with pellet formation, and help the birds combat intestinal parasites. During post-mortem exams, pied-billed grebe stomachs contained as much as 52 percent feathers.

One of my favorite things about pied-billed grebes is their call. If you visit a wetland area in the spring, you might hear an eerie series of throaty whoops. How a small brown diving bird can sound like monkey is beyond me!

Pat took the lucky grebe out to Skidaway Island and released it in a lagoon. She called us to report that all had gone smoothly, but that the little bird looked small and alone in the middle of the water. Perhaps it was thinking longingly of the Happy Meal Box Hotel and all those room-service mealworms. Good birding!

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